Are cars with modifications legal to be on the road
Discussion
Having replied to a thread where it was stated that someone had a friendly MOT centre who may turn a blind eye to an exhaust system where the cats had been deleted, it was stated that if the insurance companies were to find out say after an accident, the car may not be covered.
That kind of alludes to the fact that any cars that have had their cats removed may not be insured?
Surely this cannot be right as if it was the case, the owners must have a right to sue the garages that would be deemed to have knowingly carried out work that makes the cars illegal.
I was thinking of having work done after hearing about cat ingestion but this has really made me think twice about it.
Do you have to sign away your rights when mods are done as if not this probably leaves the garages liable?
That kind of alludes to the fact that any cars that have had their cats removed may not be insured?
Surely this cannot be right as if it was the case, the owners must have a right to sue the garages that would be deemed to have knowingly carried out work that makes the cars illegal.
I was thinking of having work done after hearing about cat ingestion but this has really made me think twice about it.
Do you have to sign away your rights when mods are done as if not this probably leaves the garages liable?
I know of an insurance company (sticky above) that has a list of mods on their database and issue cover accordingly. I know of many modified cars where owners have insurance with both bespoke and mainstream providers and when put on record of enhancements the insurance companies aren't particularly bothered. Pommehogster's Jessica being about the most enhanced and i think the premium hike was about £60. It could be because claims on Aston's are in low numbers versus premiums issued, and the message from owners has long been if your insurance company charges a premium for mods, you are with the wrong company.
in the case of an insurer not paying out for what is a hidden mod, what's the process of capture? Let's say the car was in a flood and engine wont run. What are they going to do? Try start it and measure emissions and say, you dont pass
mot so we wont pay out? Equally if the car is stolen, where is the car to test? I'm not advocating to hide anything, but my experience tells me there is no interest or practical way to test / check what you are expressing concern over from insurance companies.
I have a lot of experience of insurance assessors checking claims. Their primary concern is validity, let's say accident damage, the assessor is only concerned with questions like, does the damage exist (inspection of damaged parts) and is the quote the garage submits to repair sensible. On one assessment of flood damage claim they focussed on if the car was up to date on service records, as that was a wriggle out clause of cover in that case. There was also the famous case of complete loss payout on a car highly modified which is a story familiar to all on this forum - no problems there when a modified car was put to payout test.
(fortunately) the UK doesn't impose the regulation that Germany does, what a boring world that would be, But in some Euro countries the concerns you pose here would present a problem. The message is declare the mods to insurance company then if the worst occurs, there is no paranoia regards insurance company wriggle out.
the ingestion of cats on v12 is a real concern. Should misfire occur (failed coil) the engine runs misfiring for a while and the cat fails as result, the debris will get sucked back up into cylinder, then into inlet manifold, distributed to cylinders on that bank and cause damage severe enough needing complete rebuild (i have indeed seen just this a number of times). Should somebody want to prevent this, removing primary cats leaving secondary cats, gaining performance and noise in the process, is indeed as you state a good move. Secondary cats are far enough downstream to not fail or be sucked in, and will convert sufficiently to satisfy mot. Lets just say somebody did this but didn't declare to insurance company, i can not think how the hell the insurance company would ever test to know? As looks std from outside and would pass emissions? Apart from people helpfully making it explicit on forums, and i have seen a forum posting be used by an insurance company to get out of a claim in the past!!
in the case of an insurer not paying out for what is a hidden mod, what's the process of capture? Let's say the car was in a flood and engine wont run. What are they going to do? Try start it and measure emissions and say, you dont pass
mot so we wont pay out? Equally if the car is stolen, where is the car to test? I'm not advocating to hide anything, but my experience tells me there is no interest or practical way to test / check what you are expressing concern over from insurance companies.
I have a lot of experience of insurance assessors checking claims. Their primary concern is validity, let's say accident damage, the assessor is only concerned with questions like, does the damage exist (inspection of damaged parts) and is the quote the garage submits to repair sensible. On one assessment of flood damage claim they focussed on if the car was up to date on service records, as that was a wriggle out clause of cover in that case. There was also the famous case of complete loss payout on a car highly modified which is a story familiar to all on this forum - no problems there when a modified car was put to payout test.
(fortunately) the UK doesn't impose the regulation that Germany does, what a boring world that would be, But in some Euro countries the concerns you pose here would present a problem. The message is declare the mods to insurance company then if the worst occurs, there is no paranoia regards insurance company wriggle out.
the ingestion of cats on v12 is a real concern. Should misfire occur (failed coil) the engine runs misfiring for a while and the cat fails as result, the debris will get sucked back up into cylinder, then into inlet manifold, distributed to cylinders on that bank and cause damage severe enough needing complete rebuild (i have indeed seen just this a number of times). Should somebody want to prevent this, removing primary cats leaving secondary cats, gaining performance and noise in the process, is indeed as you state a good move. Secondary cats are far enough downstream to not fail or be sucked in, and will convert sufficiently to satisfy mot. Lets just say somebody did this but didn't declare to insurance company, i can not think how the hell the insurance company would ever test to know? As looks std from outside and would pass emissions? Apart from people helpfully making it explicit on forums, and i have seen a forum posting be used by an insurance company to get out of a claim in the past!!
Insurers seem far more active in this area than they used to be.
They now ask to be told about absolutely anything that has been changed, from the manufacturers original specification:- winter tyres; tow bar fitting; bodywork alterations; wheel changes etc.
Whether this is just to obtain additional premiums I do not know, but they keep emphasing, "You may not be covered if you do not tell us, and so may be driving without insurance".
What we do not know, is the difference between theory and practice. Perhaps it depends how big the claim is.
Has anyone heard of insurance cover becoming null and void, after modifications have been discovered?
I had a bad accident in a car, it was held at the Police compound whilst accident investigators and insurance people went over it. All was legit, all mods declared, car well maintained, agreed value policy paid out in a few weeks....car stayed in Police custody for about 4 months though. Plenty of time to examine it and find any mods like de-cat
I have heard of payouts being reduced because expensive mods were found that were not notified about, but not heard of a complete non payout
I know quite a few Lotus owners that used to run without cats on the cars for many years. At worst a couple got stopped and given a rectification order, 2 weeks to fix it
Personally could never be bothered with the hassle, it was easier to use a sports cat. There are other downsides found without a cat like the paint at the back of the car ends up covered in particulate crap that is hard to remove...at least thats what I found for the few months i tried the decat option
I have heard of payouts being reduced because expensive mods were found that were not notified about, but not heard of a complete non payout
I know quite a few Lotus owners that used to run without cats on the cars for many years. At worst a couple got stopped and given a rectification order, 2 weeks to fix it
Personally could never be bothered with the hassle, it was easier to use a sports cat. There are other downsides found without a cat like the paint at the back of the car ends up covered in particulate crap that is hard to remove...at least thats what I found for the few months i tried the decat option
Stonic said:
As previously said. Declare the mods to your insurance company. I went the full BR upgrade route a few years back and it's fully declared on the insurance policy. I paid a tad extra but I do not see how any claim could then be disputed.
Probably many mods are not declared because warranty then becomes an issue?Didn't Rob have issues with warranty due to the fact he had modified his car?
One of my mates had a rear cat job and AM were refusing to replace his blown engine at first - looks like its lose lose for the guy who wants a bit more whilst still retaining a warranty.
It would be good if the garages could offer their own warranty, if they did i would dump my manifolds for ones that didn't have cats anywhere near the heads.
bogie said:
I have heard of payouts being reduced because expensive mods were found that were not notified about, but not heard of a complete non payout
yep, car held in police custody is about only example i can think of that might be a worry re conformity if not legit, because any other time spent conformity checking will be car inside a garage and the garage will charge ins co Storage and time if repairs not authorised in reasonable time. But Police holding a car has to be in circumstances where they want to check that nothing on the car caused the serious accident, normally if other road users were harmed. In the example of the highly modified car this forum knows that was smacked up on a wedding day. Pieces of it were strewn across the highway, a bad accident involving others clearly at speed, but all the police were concerned with was that the car was recovered and removed from highway asap.AMDBSTony said:
One of my mates had a rear cat job and AM were refusing to replace his blown engine at first - looks like its lose lose for the guy who wants a bit more whilst still retaining a warranty.
It would be good if the garages could offer their own warranty, if they did i would dump my manifolds for ones that didn't have cats anywhere near the heads.
interesting story, was your friends car v8 or v12, what was eng failure? you say at first, so did engine get fixed under warranty after all?It would be good if the garages could offer their own warranty, if they did i would dump my manifolds for ones that didn't have cats anywhere near the heads.
why would you expect a garage to fit an exhaust then issue a warranty for base engine? Lets use the 4.3L as an example. A ported spec ran in race cars at 420 bhp for countless n24 races without durability problems compared std 380 bhp motor. Therefore stands to reason a bolt on exhaust that increases power to 420 is not pushing the envelope far enough that should anything happen to base engine, it was caused by exhaust. Similarly, the am power upgrade is 400 bhp (increasing from 380) on same base engine. So why would any 200 cell cat supplier taking power to same level issue base engine warranty with cat? Unless the application of the cat (lets say poor ecu remap) caused the failure, if cat disintegrated and sucked in by engine i can understand repair being levied against cat supplier, but the question will be why did cat fail? Fault with cat or misfire (which is out of control of cat supplier).
i think everybody knows this already, but if the reassuring hug from a warranty policy keeps ownership smile going, then don't do anything to compromise. But if a power / driveability improvement is what is needed to keep smile going in ownership, guys make that change and warranty isn't their consideration. I have the friendship of about 200 guys who modified exhaust, not one of them is the lose, lose you speak of, where an engine claim was even needed but not granted. There was a case of clutch bearing failure on modified clutch, but clearly the factory could not honour that claim even though owner thought they should, bizarrely... I think his rationale was that because clutch bearing failure is reasonably common, even though he had modified clutch, his claim should be upheld. In that case he wanted the car repaired overnight and the dealer network could not do that, he had the job done somewhere that could, then expected the factory to reimburse the cost of part. I leave it to you if that is a rational approach!!!
AMDBSTony said:
It would be good if the garages could offer their own warranty, if they did i would dump my manifolds for ones that didn't have cats anywhere near the heads.
In some cases they do. I had my manual DB9 heavily modified under project 'Blofeld' taking the car up to 517BHP so now comparable in power to a DBS. In the creation of 'Blofeld' BR warrant their parts and labour and integration of those parts with the whole car (Std parts they didn't fit) and a reoccurring annual basis so long as they service the car.It is my understanding they take onboard warranty in this way on all of their 'Major' projects which speaks volumes for the confidence that they have in their engineering and the robustness of the car to start with.
However, if you just put your car in for a manifold change I don't think they offer the same 'whole car' warranty. I suppose makes sense as someone could take their ageing high mileage car, spend a small sum on a manifold and come away with a base engine warranty.
It is a good business model for then as well as it virtually guarantees that they get the continued custom of my car being serviced every year and it gives me peace of mind knowing the the whole car has a high standard of warranty cover.
BamfordMike said:
AMDBSTony said:
One of my mates had a rear cat job and AM were refusing to replace his blown engine at first - looks like its lose lose for the guy who wants a bit more whilst still retaining a warranty.
It would be good if the garages could offer their own warranty, if they did i would dump my manifolds for ones that didn't have cats anywhere near the heads.
interesting story, was your friends car v8 or v12, what was eng failure? you say at first, so did engine get fixed under warranty after all?It would be good if the garages could offer their own warranty, if they did i would dump my manifolds for ones that didn't have cats anywhere near the heads.
why would you expect a garage to fit an exhaust then issue a warranty for base engine? Lets use the 4.3L as an example. A ported spec ran in race cars at 420 bhp for countless n24 races without durability problems compared std 380 bhp motor. Therefore stands to reason a bolt on exhaust that increases power to 420 is not pushing the envelope far enough that should anything happen to base engine, it was caused by exhaust. Similarly, the am power upgrade is 400 bhp (increasing from 380) on same base engine. So why would any 200 cell cat supplier taking power to same level issue base engine warranty with cat? Unless the application of the cat (lets say poor ecu remap) caused the failure, if cat disintegrated and sucked in by engine i can understand repair being levied against cat supplier, but the question will be why did cat fail? Fault with cat or misfire (which is out of control of cat supplier).
i think everybody knows this already, but if the reassuring hug from a warranty policy keeps ownership smile going, then don't do anything to compromise. But if a power / driveability improvement is what is needed to keep smile going in ownership, guys make that change and warranty isn't their consideration. I have the friendship of about 200 guys who modified exhaust, not one of them is the lose, lose you speak of, where an engine claim was even needed but not granted. There was a case of clutch bearing failure on modified clutch, but clearly the factory could not honour that claim even though owner thought they should, bizarrely... I think his rationale was that because clutch bearing failure is reasonably common, even though he had modified clutch, his claim should be upheld. In that case he wanted the car repaired overnight and the dealer network could not do that, he had the job done somewhere that could, then expected the factory to reimburse the cost of part. I leave it to you if that is a rational approach!!!
The car in question was a 2012 DBS and was 2 months or so inside its warranty with AM. At first they said that they would not honour the warranty but then gave in and replaced the engine at a cost of around £25,000.
I don't know why you have launched into specifics about race cams and all that stuff, I know jack s
t about any of that and to be honest am not really bothered about it. I drive them, break them and someone else fixes them.....simples. All I was saying was that if a warranty company can offer a warranty then why cant anyone else?
I would have thought that if an expert can put up a reasonable argument as to why any work that they have done would not allow anyone to wriggle, for example if you changed the back lights it could hardly be attributed to the engine overheating, then this may be a way of facilitating those who want those specific mods and the warranty?
If for example a garage said that if they changed the exhaust manifolds on my V12 and then the engine blew up for whatever reason, that is one scenario and I would have to take the pill and stand the cost as it would not be warrantied. If on the other hand the garage gave me the comfort of saying that they would insure me against this as whatever failure could not be caused by work they have done and is backed up by their expert knowledge, why wouldn't I have the work done?
I think that if anyone is confident in anything that they do that would not be of risk to the owner or the detriment of the car, say a rear cat delete on a V12 as an example, surely it would be a good business proposition for anyone to offer that security limited to the work done? Obviously if the diff fell of its mounts after the spark plugs had been changed it wouldn't be covered, why would it be? On the other hand if the back lights were changed and one fell out, I would expect it to be covered.
I think that this was why AM conceded as my mate had his rear cats removed and had AM approved QS pipes instead - there was a real argument to state that the cat removal had nothing to do with why the engine blew. I may be wrong on this but it is the opinion of a few so maybe there is merit in it - who knows?
Anyway, the thread isn't about defending anything or berating anyone. I was merely just asking if cars were legal if they had work done that means they are not in line with manufacturers spec and therefore should fail an MOT - this would theoretically render them not roadworthy and as a result would not have insurance.
Hopefully there aren't many that fall into this category as it could prove extremely costly in more ways than one!
To answer the original question re "insurance"
The rules have just changed and insurers are no longer allowed to refute claims on the basis of such changes "unless" they had a material influence on the incident.
e.g. Refusing to pay on a theft claim if the car had cat delete.
As has already been said before, just let your insures know to be on the safe side
The rules have just changed and insurers are no longer allowed to refute claims on the basis of such changes "unless" they had a material influence on the incident.
e.g. Refusing to pay on a theft claim if the car had cat delete.
As has already been said before, just let your insures know to be on the safe side
Speculatore said:
However, if you just put your car in for a manifold change I don't think they offer the same 'whole car' warranty. I suppose makes sense as someone could take their ageing high mileage car, spend a small sum on a manifold and come away with a base engine warranty.
It is a good business model for then as well as it virtually guarantees that they get the continued custom of my car being serviced every year and it gives me peace of mind knowing the the whole car has a high standard of warranty cover.
I was only eluding to anyone putting a warranty on what they had done. If a 100K engine holed a piston after manifolds were fit, that same expert could prove it had nothing to do with the work they had done which would be a fact. If however the manifold came off and melted the wiring (an impossibility I know but humour me) then this would be backed up under that limited specific warranty.It is a good business model for then as well as it virtually guarantees that they get the continued custom of my car being serviced every year and it gives me peace of mind knowing the the whole car has a high standard of warranty cover.
I ask that nobody takes out of context what I am trying to say here - hopefully you get the idea of what I mean.
As for servicing I am not being specific about any garage as its just an idea that may entice one into having mods work done.
If any garage offered this kind of additional guarantee, of course the car would still be serviced, it has to be to keep its full AMSH in order to maintain its warranty.
RichB said:
AMDBSTony said:
I was only eluding to anyone putting a warranty on what they had done..
It might elude you why they wouldn't do this but that's not what you were alluding to. 
I asked a genuine question.......don't need and don't appreciate english lessons from you thanks.
Lets drop the sarcasm! - spell checker is cruel.
Tony is asking a straight forward question that's turned into just what BR will or won't do. I think it was meant a general question as to what modifications by any indie would affect either the AM or extended warranty.
Speculatores example of extensive mods to a car at the lower price range, which have given equivalent power to a DBS but still is worth considerably less, can make sense. If it's a keeper and he's happy to maintain it with the same indie that did the work, fair play, but if he sold it and the new owner took it to a different garage or main dealer, what then?
However mods to a car worth 80k or more that would invalidate the warranty, is a bigger decision and a mature discussion on here without play ground insults, could prove invaluable to many.
Speculatores example of extensive mods to a car at the lower price range, which have given equivalent power to a DBS but still is worth considerably less, can make sense. If it's a keeper and he's happy to maintain it with the same indie that did the work, fair play, but if he sold it and the new owner took it to a different garage or main dealer, what then?
However mods to a car worth 80k or more that would invalidate the warranty, is a bigger decision and a mature discussion on here without play ground insults, could prove invaluable to many.
If you ever get to 100k miles in an Aston, you'll have had no AM guarantee for years and work with your then favoured indie will be sold as seen. As for a potential future owner, of a modified car, they can appreciate it (or not buy it) or they can whistle dixie
Edited by DB4DM on Sunday 3rd May 00:30
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